The field of the invention generally relates to electrical jacks, and more particularly to a jack module including a printed circuit board and lamp assembly which is removable from the front of a jackfield housing.
Electrical jacks are commonly used for digital or voice frequency interconnections in applications such as, for example, telephone central offices, testing and patch panels, computer and data processing equipment, multiplex gear, and commercial and industrial patching and control applications. Typically, a plurality of jacks each of which may have, for example, three forward facing jack sleeves are arranged side-by-side in a housing or enclosure that mounts in a rack. In the normal configuration, input and output circuits are connected to the back, and the jack sleeves are available on the front for inserting patch cord plugs to interconnect, monitor, or test circuits.
A jackfield including jack modules is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14,909, filed Feb. 13, 1987. Therein, each jack module includes a printed circuit board having a front right-angle connector, a tri-jack assembly having pins inserted into the connector, and a forward extending lamp housing connected to the printed circuit board above the connector. In initial assembly and also for later service or reconfiguration, the tri-jacks are inserted and removed from the front of the jackfield housing, while the printed circuit boards are removed from the rear. In order to provide voltage and ground to each of the printed circuit boards for lighting the lamps, bus strips were run laterally in the jackfield housing between the connectors and the tri-jacks, and the strips had perpendicular pins which inserted into connector terminals. In some applications, this jackfield had a drawback because the printed circuit boards could not be removed from the front. Among other reasons, the bus strips running laterally in front of the printed circuit boards prevented their front removal. Further, if the printed circuit boards are removed from the rear such as for service or to change the configuration, it is difficult to align the bus pins into the printed circuit board connector.